Ramblings that the whole world can see!

Monthly Archives: January 2018

OK. Once you’ve downloaded Ubuntu the next decision will be where to install it. My suggestion is go virtual. I run Linux on my corporate laptop and on my personal iMac; both using VMware Fusion. As of this writing I am running v8.5 and the current version for Mac is v10. The other way of going is to install VMware ESXi on a server and create a Linux virtual machine. That’s a great way of learning not only about Linux but also virtualization.

One of the modern corporate technology problems I used to deal with almost every working day was the screen saver settings on my corporate laptop. The corporate security team has done an amazing job of locking my PC down and making it safe. The down side of that is that they control the screen saver settings so that after 5 minutes my PC will display the screen saver and require a password to make it go away. If I’m presenting or delivering a demo this is not good.

Then I purchased and installed a WeiebeTech Mouse Jiggler (www.cru-inc.com/mj3). This tiny USB device looks like another mouse to my PC. More importantly it behaves like a mouse that is always moving. Not moving so much that you see the mouse on the display move; but enough so that the screensaver doesn’t start.

Now I can plug in this very small USB device during preparation for a presentation or demo and not have to concern myself about the screen saver.

The Jiggler has other uses. If you are a security or forensics professional you should probably have one of these in your pocket at all times. If you are asked to examine a computer plugging the Jiggler in will make sure that the screen saver (and potentially a password challenge) doesn’t happen there.